Ebola

The omniscient Glenn Reynolds picked up the image below from a Twitter feed. If Obama’s own incompetence isn’t making him “seethe,” this photoshopped image just might do it. I’m filing this under Laughter is the Best Medicine. All I can say is thanks, I needed that. »

Today’s New York Times headlines: “Amid Assurances on Ebola, Obama Is Said to Seethe.” Said by whom, one wonders. The answer is as you would expect: “It’s not tight,” a visibly angry Mr. Obama said of the response, according to people briefed on the meeting. … “He was not satisfied with the response,” a senior official said. … Senior officials said they pushed Mr. Obama to name an Ebola coordinator…. »

Today President Obama announced the appointment of Ron Klain as his administration’s “ebola czar.” Mr. Klain is a lobbyist and long-time political operative who is currently an Obama aide and has served as chief of staff to both Al Gore and Vice-President Biden. Klain also served as Chief of Staff or Staff Director for Attorney General Janet Reno, the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was »

The theme of government bureaucrats as zombies is as old as vampires at least, but sometimes they go out of their way to ratify its inner truth. The CDC “Zombie Pandemic” preparedness manual pictured here is not a parody pic for Power Line’s “Week in Pictures”—it’s real publication the CDC put out a couple years ago. (Here’s the web link for the CDC’s zombie preparedness project—screen shot below.) Remember this »

Nina Pham, the Dallas nurse who was infected with the Ebola virus, is in good condition and improving, according to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Pham has been transferred to the NIH hospital here in Maryland for reasons of “staffing.” Dozens of employees at the Dallas hospital are treating only Pham, and this is jeopardizing the ability to care for other patients. NIH described Pham’s condition in less favorable terms. She »

Yesterday President Obama expounded on his current rationale for declining to impose travel restrictions on visa holders from west African countries struggling with the Ebola outbreak (video below). Obama prefaced his statement with his customary red flag: “I want to make sure that everybody is clear about the issue.” See if you can follow this: I don’t have a philosophical objection necessarily to a travel ban, if that is the »

Yuval Levin has a sensible article on NRO called “Lessons of the Ebola Crisis.” Levin believes that the Obama administration is basically right when it says we are not witnessing an outbreak of Ebola in the U.S. and that such an outbreak is unlikely in our highly developed public-health system. However, he also believes that critics are right to say we have witnessed serious failures in the response to the »

Steve noted this morning that President Obama’s decision to cancel a fundraising trip and give a speech on ebola instead shows that he knows he is in trouble. Here is another clue: the front page of this morning’s New York Daily News, a paper that endorsed Obama in 2008: He’s come a long way from the days when he was telling the oceans what to do. »

The federal government, like almost any large institution, will nearly always be wrong-footed when confronted by the unexpected, especially if it’s an emergency. The feds will be slow off the mark and too many of their initial decisions will be wrong. We saw this with Hurricane Katrina and we’re seeing it now with Ebola. Conservatives, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised. If the federal government were capable of performing well »